


Bartering

by The_Last_Kenobi



Series: FebuWhump 2021 [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Jedi Apprentice Series - Jude Watson & Dave Wolverton, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, FebuWhump2021, Gen, Human Experimentation, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), Self-Esteem Issues, Unethical Experimentation, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:14:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29648391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Last_Kenobi/pseuds/The_Last_Kenobi
Summary: Jenna Zan Arbor has caught herself a Jedi Master to perform experiments on.But Obi-Wan Kenobi is coming for his Master, and he will not be stopped - even if he has to make a deal with the devil.(Qui-Gon will never forgive him for this.)Written for Febuwhump 2021 - "Take me instead."
Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn & Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: FebuWhump 2021 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2150256
Comments: 6
Kudos: 53





	Bartering

**Author's Note:**

> Another short story - but never fear, readers - AAOO will be updated tomorrow!

Adi Gallia barely dodged the burst of toxic gas that shot out of a vent at high, pressurized speeds. The vapor impacted on the opposite wall instead and sizzled, burning straight through stone.

“Master!” Siri cried.

“I’m fine— _Siri!”_ Adi’s reassurance broke off in a scream as a bolt of energy appeared out of the black and struck the blonde Padawan directly in her unprotected side. Siri stumbled, her pink lightsaber disengaging as she fell to her knees.

“…Master…” Siri said again, much softer.

Obi-Wan leapt in front of his fellow Padawan, blue blade waving, defending her. Master Gallia dove over yet another trap and landed next to her apprentice, fingers reaching towards the wound, desperately seeking. Siri swayed in her Master’s arms.

“Obi-Wan,” Adi said in a strained voice. “These halls are too heavily protected. Siri needs Healers, now, right now.”

Obi-Wan’s chest tightened. “But—my Master!”

“I know, believe me,” Master Gallia said firmly, “But we have no choice. We cannot take Zan Arbor down.”

The red-haired Padawan spun his blade again, repelling another spray of focused blaster-fire. His chest felt too tight; the weight that had been growing inside him ever since his Master had vanished had suddenly tripled, suffocating him. He couldn’t turn back.

Every habit of his youth, every inch of training, and all of Obi-Wan’s natural inclinations urged him to obey the trusted authority of Adi Gallia.

But something else screamed at him to stay.

Qui-Gon was too important – to the Force, or maybe just Obi-Wan Kenobi.

“Padawan,” Master Gallia said sharply.

“Go,” said Obi-Wan flatly, turning away from her to advance further into the darkness. “Go now.”

“Padawan Kenobi, turn around this instant!” the Tholatian Master commanded, her voice strained as Siri collapsed into unconsciousness in her arms. “Obi-Wan! It’s madness!” Adi continued, her voice rising into a plea as Obi-Wan vaulted over a trap in the floor and then rolled below a spray of darts.

The fifteen-year-old apprentice paused to turn around, now many yards away from his injured friend and her Master. Adi Gallia was too far away in the near-darkness to see clearly, but in the Force Obi-Wan could feel her concern and rising desperation, caught between impossible choices.

“It’s all right, Master Gallia,” Obi-Wan called, his voice open and sincere now. “This is my decision. I’m sure of it.”

“Obi-Wan, do you have any idea what your Master would say to me, to either of us, if I let you do this?” Master Gallia called back, shifting her own Padawan in her arms and rising to her feet.

“I can imagine,” Obi-Wan acknowledged wryly. He raised his saber a little, illuminating his face in sharp-cut blue for her to see. He smiled. “I’m sure we’ll never hear the end of it. But don’t worry. I intend to take full responsibility.”

And then he went off into the darkness, in search of Jenna Zan Arbor and her captive.

Adi Gallia backed cautiously down the hallway. Her eyes followed the vanishing shadow of the headstrong Padawan, and a terrible sense of finality washed over her, making her clutch her own apprentice even more tightly. 

* * *

“Another dismal failure,” the cold voice echoed deafeningly, and Qui-Gon groaned as his head throbbed violently. He clamped his eyes shut against the pain, and the blindingly bright lights that were glaring down on him where he lay, strapped to a metal contraption that passed for a chair.

He had no idea how long he had been here, in the clutches of a mad scientist with no code of ethics whatsoever.

 _Forever,_ whispered the dull, defeated part of his mind.

His entire body ached.

Zan Arbor sighed in irritation, the sound crackling across the loudspeakers arranged throughout the room. She always remained safely out of the way, still hoping to draw Force reactions from him with pain and terror, despite the fact that he had managed to keep enough control to prevent that.

Instead of drawing on the Force for strength, he let himself approach death a little more every day.

Instead of pushing the Force outwards to gain his freedom, whenever his control slipped – whenever the pain took over – he unleashed the energy on himself.

Killing himself faster.

Jenna Zan Arbor would never get the results she wanted.

He would die to ensure it.

Zan Arbor seemed to sense his determination, because she spoke again: “You cannot resist me forever. And if you do, I will move on to another subject. There are many Jedi. There are many fools.”

Qui-Gon’s laugh was more of a groan. His jaw ached with tension. “You… will not… succeed.”

“Science,” she said coldly, “always prevails.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said a new voice out of nowhere. “I don’t think even the spin of the galaxy could stand against the stubbornness of Qui-Gon Jinn, if he decided to pit himself against it.”

For a moment, Qui-Gon thought he was hallucinating. He blinked hard, straining his neck to see the figure that had appeared in the doorway.

But Obi-Wan Kenobi, gleaming in the too-bright lights of the laboratory, did not vanish.

The boy gave a wide grin, tipping a two-fingered salute to the darkened glass high above, behind which the good doctor was watching. “Jenna,” he greeted.

“You must be the apprentice,” she said, after a slight pause. “Didn’t I just say that Jedi are fools? And here you are to support my hypothesis.”

“Well, I suppose I’m easily classified as a fool,” Obi-Wan said thoughtfully, walking over to the table and resting his hands on its edge, his fingertips just brushing Qui-Gon’s tunics. He did not look his Master in the eye, keeping his blue-green gaze on the observation window. On Zan Arbor. “I did, after all, waltz in here alone.”

“Don’t try to convince me that you really came all alone,” she scorned. “I know of the other two.”

“Ah, they left,” Obi-Wan said casually. “Your traps were well-laid, I must admit.”

Qui-Gon inhaled raggedly, staring upwards at the boy standing over him.

The after-effects of torture were making reality warp and shine in unnatural ways. Under the bright lights, smiling blasély up at a walking nightmare, the boy looked strangely angelic. Ethereal.

“Obi…” He murmured. “Obi-Wan?”

“And you really think you can get your Master out of here by yourself?” the scientist asked. “He’s far too weak to so much as _crawl_ out of here.”

“I know.”

Obi-Wan did look at Qui-Gon, then.

At fifteen, his face had not yet completely lost the softness of childhood; the lines around his eyes were shallow and made from laughter and that specific, ponderous expression that came over his face whenever he was lost in thought.

At that moment, he had the widest smile the Master had ever seen him wear, and his eyes were incredibly, infinitely sad.

And Qui-Gon was suddenly _afraid_.

“P…Padawan…” he struggled to speak.

Obi-Wan did not answer him, his eyes already returning to Zan Arbor, but one hand shifted to rest over one of Qui-Gon’s bound wrists.

“—come here to beg, young Jedi?” Zan Arbor asked.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Obi-Wan replied. “I did, however, come here to bargain.”

“And what,” she said slowly, “could you possibly have to offer me? This is the experiment I have dreamed of, little boy. I will not give it up.”

Again, that wide smile, those sad eyes. “Me,” said Obi-Wan simply. “Take me instead.”

There was a dreadful pause.

Qui-Gon’s mind was swirling away as it so often did under the constant use of drugs and pain, and his eyes were throbbing with a growing headache, but nothing, _nothing_ could soften the blow of that offer – or what came next.

“You’re struggling to get him to unleash the Force in ways you can really measure, aren’t you?” his Padawan asked, the hand on Qui-Gon’s wrist tightening its grip slightly. “He’s a Jedi Master. He knows how to resist. He’ll resist instinctually, even if you drive him out of his mind.” The boy took a shaky breath. His gaze remained steady. “But I’m a Padawan, not a Master. I’ll put up a fight, you can be sure of that,” Obi-Wan added, a trace of steel and fire creeping into his tone, “but I am not trained enough to stop you. You’ll get your results, and I get to know that my Master and my fellow Jedi are safe – at least for now.”

Qui-Gon opened his mouth to protest but was cut off by Jenna’s immediate response of—

“Deal.”

She triggered a switch, and the glass lightened, the protective shielding fading away so that the scientist could be seen. She cut an impressive figure, tall and wiry, her pale gold hair up in a tight tail, striking green eyes fixated with both emptiness and hunger on the young man below her.

“Let me make sure my Master is safely away before you put me under,” Obi-Wan requested.

“And if I deny you?”

“I won’t go back on our deal. But I’d rather be sure we actually have a deal before I cooperate.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Zan Arbor smiled. “Then let’s put your dear Master on a ship and get you settled in, why don’t we.”

Qui-Gon’s attempted protest came out as a muffled groan.

Obi-Wan looked down at him, his expression painfully fond. “Shh, Master. Everything is going to be okay.”

Qui-Gon shook his head and regretted it immediately. His vision swam and began to darken.

Despite weeks of torture and uncertainty, it was at that moment that real terror gripped him, physically painful, like an iron fist squeezing his heart – the world was slipping away, and with it, Obi-Wan Kenobi. The feeling that this was his last glimpse of the boy sent _horror_ rolling through him.

“No,” he rasped, tugging weakly against his bonds. _“No._ Obi…Obi-Wan…”

“It’s all right, Master,” Obi-Wan said affectionately, as his features began to blur, his hair a copper blaze in the bright lights and his sad ocean-blue eyes fading into shadows. “This is my choice. This is what you’ve been training me to be, isn’t it? You’ll be free, in more ways than one – you have things to do, Master Qui-Gon, and I… I’m going to finish the job that I should’ve finished on Bandomeer.”

Bandomeer.

An intrepid boy determined to be a Jedi, a stubborn Master who would not see him, a kidnapping, a collar fitted with a bomb – an offer to die, so that Qui-Gon could escape.

Pain.

“No,” Qui-Gon groaned. _“No, no, please_. Obi-Wan, _please,_ not this—”

His eyes went dark.

In the blackness, he felt a small, warm hand settle reassuringly against his cheek. Heard a familiar voice, saying _something_ he couldn’t quite catch, overridden by the sound of heeled shoes clicking against polished floors and Zan Arbor saying, “Come along, little Jedi—”

* * *

When Qui-Gon awoke three days later on an automated ship with a medical droid hovering over him, there was nothing left of Obi-Wan Kenobi except the gaping hole in his mind where their bond had lived, and a lightsaber, too small for Qui-Gon’s hands, resting all alone on a nearby shelf.

That, and the knowledge that no matter how hard he searched, he had lost his apprentice the moment Obi-Wan had held his hand and said, _“Take me instead.”_


End file.
